Tag Archives: prawns

For about two months now, I’ve been getting helpful little tips direct into my inbox from various pregnancy and parenting related sites that have asked for the last day of my menstrual cycle (September 14, 2010) and my e-mail address (not a chance I’ll be posting that here.) Normally, the newsletter will include a link to my week of pregnancy and that will tell me how big the baby is. Most of the time the baby is compared to a food item, like a large prawn, a ripe peach or a turnip and it will also give facts as to what new thing the baby is doing. Week 12: the baby starts to swallow it’s own amniotic fluid that is increasingly full of baby’s urine. Week 14: the baby is now covered with fur. Week 16: the baby can now hear what is going on outside the womb. Also included will be links to articles about common questions other pre-mommies have. Questions like: what should I be eating? or how to I make sure I’m gaining the correct amount of weight? or I know it’s safe to have sex during pregnancy but what about oral or anal sex or to use a vibrator? Yeah, I’m not kidding, I got that one last night in my inbox when I returned from a dear friend’s welcome home party. I won’t sport with your patience and tell you what the long-winded answer was. Okay fine, I will. It’s fine. It’s all fine, go ahead and get your groove on if you are so inclined but do try not to get any VD or poo in your who-who. Urinary Tract Infections are common enough during pregnancy with out shoving lube and feces into your lady parts.

While I do tend to read a lot normally, I’ve been reading more and doing a who lot more writing. Most of the day, while I write and read and cook and eat, I have my iTunes tuned to the radio band and am listening to NPR. However, for the last week or two I’ve been listening to David Sedaris audio books for an hour or so each day, sometimes longer but mostly just when there are shows on that I don’t care for very much. There is one personality on KPCC now that I just don’t like any longer. I used to love the way he moderated calls and kept his contributors on point but now I find he’s become wishy washy, too accepting of crack-pots and after ten years, his voice has become whiny and grating. Sorry, L.M. but that is just the way it is now. Maybe it will change after I stop being so moody. Maybe.

I realized just yesterday that because baby dad is currently 1000 miles away and I don’t go out of the house very frequently, the male voices the little monster hears most frequently are Karl Kassel, Kai Ryssdal, Ira Glass and the rest of the personalities and contributors for various NPR and PRI programs and of course, David Sedaris. Seeing as the little monster can hear now, will my child grow up in the womb expected to be greeted by these voices when it arrives here? Is it starting to form bonds with the voices, thinking perhaps these are the voices of it’s uncles or it’s aunts. Who will it think it’s dad is, based on the sounds I hear. Will it be the one it hears most frequently or the one it hears for the longest time periods?

I would be remiss to lead you to believe that all I listen to is high minded radio programing. I did watch a weekend long marathon of “My Fair Wedding with David Tutera” so it’s possible that the kid thinks Daddy likes to talk about gorgeous lighting designs and custom wedding cakes. This isn’t a problem though. I’m totally okay with having a child be either light in the loafers or prone to wearing comfortable shoes. The sexual orientation of the kiddo is the last on my concern. I would be equally happy seeing my son be in a loving relationship with Stuart as I would be if it were a Mary and the same goes for a girl. In fact, I’m pretty sure having a lesbian for a daughter would be maybe a little easier than a straight girl. I don’t know though, as I haven’t raised either type. I’ll keep you posted when the time comes. The dad and I are even trying to pick a name for if the kid comes out a hermaphrodite. Any suggestions with that would be helpful.

So, I guess I need to be more mindful about what noises I subject myself to. It’s probably a good thing the kid hears dogs barking, as I’m always around dogs. It’s also probably a good thing the kid hears Danzig now, as it will for sure hear it when it is out of the womb and it probably will until it heads of too college or trade school or the military (yay for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, my kiddo will be able to join if it wants provided it is anything but a hermaphrodite as they still don’t let them join) or the Peace Corps. I suppose I should start spending more time around foreign voices too so the kid will be acclimated to that as well. So many things to think about when trying to raised a kid and just think, I don’t even have the kid yet, I have a furry, moving, urine drinking little alien.

Thirteen weeks along. Officially, the little monster is the size of a peach or a baseball or as one site put it, a large prawn. I like to think I have a beady-eyed little prawn floating around in an amniotic sac filled with burre blanc, it’s little tentacles feeling about and tickling my uterus. In a few weeks, it will be strong enough for me to feel the gentle little tickles. Baby prawns don’t have very strong tentacles right now. They must calcify before they can be felt. Maybe as it gets older, a cajun spice mix will show up. Oh, god. That would be so good. I’m suppose to have pot roast at a friend’s house tonight but maybe I’ll see if anyone wants to go to the Boiling Shrimp.

My latest time waster on the internet has been gender prediction quizzes. I only get one answer. One answer from the Chinese Birth Chart site, one answer from the Western Horoscope site, one answer from the palmistry site, one answer from the symptoms checker and one answer from the old-wives tales site. The answer? A boy. It’s going to be a boy.

I won’t find out if it will be a boy until either January 4th or February 14th. Why the difference? Well, at the County Hospital that I had gone to for my first appointment, they don’t see any reason to do an ultrasound at every appointment. The also don’t seem very happy to give the print out of the ultrasound, which I find very strange. I switched to another hospital though. This time it’s a clinic that is associated with a much nicer, private hospital and they do all sorts of fun stuff and they do it every time you go in. I’m pretty happy about that.

Crap, I just realized I missed an appointment this morning with the good clinic. Shoot. I can’t go now because it was fasting labs. Man, what a stinker. On hold now. I guess I can try to do it in the morning tomorrow. Shoot. Shooooot!!